(21-09-2016 07:28 AM)Dom Wrote: Being a tomboy just means there is a preference for more rugged activities. I was a tomboy until puberty. The liking of "boy activities" remained, but femininity set in. They are actually unrelated.

It never occurred to me that boys are shamed more for their preference of activities. Not that tomboys are not shamed, but it's not a taboo like it is for boys.

None of it has anything to do with gender identity.

Out of curiosity would you associate your tomboyishness to environmental/social factors, more so than biological factors?

I just loved climbing trees, playing ball and jumping off a roof into a big pile of leaves and so forth. Not practical to wear frilly little girl's dresses for that. I don't think these things have anything to do with gender.

I think that social pressures cause kids to prefer one type of activity over another - there is no biological reason for a pre-pubescent to be feminine or masculine. Girls and boys both like to play with legos or dolls. It's people who tell them whether it's appropriate. I think these preferences are more of an indicator of the kids natural talents than gender.

But, I have no real basis for saying that other than my own perception. I am sure you can find out what science has to say about it if you bother to research it.

Science is the process we've designed to be responsible for generating our best guess as to what the fuck is going on. Girly Man

(21-09-2016 09:19 AM)Tomasia Wrote: Regardless I'm more curious as to how these differences, express themselves. What patterns, what behaviors, tendencies do you think result from them. What tendencies/ behaviors would you associate with the female brain here, as opposed to the male brain?

This is a very difficult question to answer because we're all different and biological differences are enforced and accentuated by society. So in the same way you immediately dismiss the brain scans as being a result of hormone therapy, you can just as easily dismiss whatever anyone says as being a product of how they were raised. Yet there are many trans people who have gone to real great efforts over the majority of their lives to overcome their gender dysphoria by living as society expects them to. For example, by becoming the toughest marine etc. Only they never manage to overcome their gender dysphoria by fighting it.

Your gender is felt more markedly if it is not consistent with the sex of your body. But even for trans people it can be really difficult to determine what exactly is the problem.

Have you ever felt like a man? Or ever felt manly? Maybe you were standing up for your wife or whatever and it felt good? Maybe you were following some kind of instinct or liked seeing your muscle bound body in the mirror for example?

You can rationalise it all afterwards if you want in that you want a healthy body or love your wife, but if you are honest with yourself, there will be certain times in your life where you have felt good about your gender. Now try to imagine that instead of feeling good about it, it felt wrong and unnatural.

To try and express that feeling of unnaturalness I can try to give you an example that might work for you, but please don't think that gender identity is all about sexual attraction. I'm assuming that you are heterosexual and do not have any bisexual feelings? If so then imagine having sex with another man and being sexually submissive to him. If you are bisexual or repressed then this won't work. But imagining that, how does that feel? Now imagine that kind of feeling with how society and your peers expect you to think, behave and act. Then imagine having a body that warrants them having that expectation. That body is not you and even if no other human existed, it still wouldn't be you. Yet these feelings go away when the trans-person transitions and can start to be themselves.

This is not an adequate description, and everyone is different, but I'm just trying to give you the means to empathise to some extent.

(21-09-2016 09:48 AM)Mathilda Wrote: Yet there are many trans people who have gone to real great efforts over the majority of their lives to overcome their gender dysphoria by living as society expects them to. For example, by becoming the toughest marine etc. Only they never manage to overcome their gender dysphoria by fighting it.

Yep, that rings a loud bell for me, I have had several friends like that.

Science is the process we've designed to be responsible for generating our best guess as to what the fuck is going on. Girly Man

(21-09-2016 09:27 AM)Dom Wrote: I think that social pressures cause kids to prefer one type of activity over another - there is no biological reason for a pre-pubescent to be feminine or masculine. Girls and boys both like to play with legos or dolls. It's people who tell them whether it's appropriate. I think these preferences are more of an indicator of the kids natural talents than gender.

But, I have no real basis for saying that other than my own perception. I am sure you can find out what science has to say about it if you bother to research it.

I think there's something contradictory in suggesting there is such a thing as brains distinguishable between male and female, but yet no actual behavior or tendencies that can be labeled as masculine or feminine based on these biological distinctions. That there's something contradictory in the view of masculine and feminine as a social/environmental construct, while at the same time advocating for the existence of masculine/feminine brains.

If as Girly suggested a person can be born with a female brain, in a male body, what sort of behaviors/tendencies would we see expressed as a result of this? It seems to be that if we point out any particular behavior, or tendency we seem to associate that more with social/environmental factors more so than biological.

"Tell me, muse, of the storyteller who has been thrust to the edge of the world, both an infant and an ancient, and through him reveal everyman." ---Homer the aged poet.

"In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it."

Yet there are differences between boys and girls and how they behave and think, and it's not all to do with how they are raised. We're still learning how the brain functions and what part is responsible for what.

(21-09-2016 10:19 AM)Mathilda Wrote: Yet there are differences between boys and girls and how they behave and think, and it's not all to do with how they are raised. We're still learning how the brain functions and what part is responsible for what.

Which aspects of how a boy or girl think and behave do you think are biological? Are innate inclinations here?

If someone isn't particularly sure whether they have a male of female brain, what behaviors and thought patterns might he/she observe, that can help them determine what type of brain he/she has?

"Tell me, muse, of the storyteller who has been thrust to the edge of the world, both an infant and an ancient, and through him reveal everyman." ---Homer the aged poet.

"In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it."

(21-09-2016 10:19 AM)Mathilda Wrote: Yet there are differences between boys and girls and how they behave and think, and it's not all to do with how they are raised. We're still learning how the brain functions and what part is responsible for what.

Yes, there are, but they have nothing to do with dress or play, really. Small children are mostly just curious...

Nature or nurture has never been a real thing. It's always both.

Science is the process we've designed to be responsible for generating our best guess as to what the fuck is going on. Girly Man

(21-09-2016 09:48 AM)Mathilda Wrote: This is a very difficult question to answer because we're all different and biological differences are enforced and accentuated by society. So in the same way you immediately dismiss the brain scans as being a result of hormone therapy, you can just as easily dismiss whatever anyone says as being a product of how they were raised.

I think that’s very true. I also think it’s true that individuals with any series of inclinations, and those who a have competing set of inclinations will show differences in their brain, regardless if those difference are biological or environmentally produced. Because it’s all reducible to the neurochemistry in our brains to begin with.

It’s perhaps why for me it seems more meaningful to talk of the effects of these differences in the brain, to see how they play in terms of tendencies, and behaviors than in the actual differences in the brains themselves.

Quote:To try and express that feeling of unnaturalness I can try to give you an example that might work for you, but please don't think that gender identity is all about sexual attraction. I'm assuming that you are heterosexual and do not have any bisexual feelings? If so then imagine having sex with another man and being sexually submissive to him. If you are bisexual or repressed then this won't work. But imagining that, how does that feel? Now imagine that kind of feeling with how society and your peers expect you to think, behave and act. Then imagine having a body that warrants them having that expectation. That body is not you and even if no other human existed, it still wouldn't be you. Yet these feelings go away when the trans-person transitions and can start to be themselves.

This is not an adequate description, and everyone is different, but I'm just trying to give you the means to empathise to some extent.

I don’t really question the biological nature of sexual attraction. I imagine that there is a biological component that draws me to scents/physical shape/feeling of a woman, etc.. That my lesbian counterpart might share with me here.

And I understand that there’s a variety of individuals who don’t feel comfortable in the particular body they were born into, whether male or female. But I lean more to the view that this is not biological. That such uncomfortability exists only when exposed to socially constructed gender roles, and finding oneself unable to identify as acutely with one they’ve been assigned too by society. Such as the brown kid who doesn’t feel comfortable being brown, and wished that he was born white. It’s hard to associate a transgender individuals sense of maleness, or femaleness as biological, as it is to associate the ethnic kid in my example sense of brownness’ or whiteness as biological. Because both masculinity and femininity, like brown and white here as identities seem more or less like a social construct.

The biological component of this identity, even at this point seems non-existent. Where is it’s a bit easier to see when it comes to sexual attraction.

"Tell me, muse, of the storyteller who has been thrust to the edge of the world, both an infant and an ancient, and through him reveal everyman." ---Homer the aged poet.

"In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it."

(21-09-2016 11:24 AM)Tomasia Wrote: And I understand that there’s a variety of individuals who don’t feel comfortable in the particular body they were born into, whether male or female. But I lean more to the view that this is not biological. That such uncomfortability exists only when exposed to socially constructed gender roles, and finding oneself unable to identify as acutely with one they’ve been assigned too by society. Such as the brown kid who doesn’t feel comfortable being brown, and wished that he was born white. It’s hard to associate a transgender individuals sense of maleness, or femaleness as biological, as it is to associate the ethnic kid in my example sense of brownness’ or whiteness as biological. Because both masculinity and femininity, like brown and white here as identities seem more or less like a social construct.

But if gender were wholly socially constructed and gender dysphoria was nothing more than a problem of socialisation, then people would not spend their entire lives fighting gender dysphoria using every means at their disposal only to fail. The entire medical establishment used to think like you, and over many years they finally came round to the conclusion that the only cure that works is gender reassignment. This would not be the case it was a matter of learned behaviours.

(21-09-2016 11:24 AM)Tomasia Wrote: The biological component of this identity, even at this point seems non-existent. Where is it’s a bit easier to see when it comes to sexual attraction.

You are not taking into account that we are hampered by our ability to measure and understand the workings of the brain. As I said before, work is still in progress. It was only about twenty years ago when they found a difference in autopsies, and only recently that they have started to spot differences that can be scanned. There just isn't the funding for this kind of investigative work to be carried out. I've had many questions about how neurons function for example and I was told that they were good questions, but until someone gets the funding to actually investigate, we just won't know.

So you can't say that the biological component seems non-existent when we don't actually know how most of the brain functions. It's like looking into a dark room and concluding that nothing's there.